From Kantian Moral Constructivism "to" Political Constructivism "

Samuel Freeman, a well-known scholar, said that John Rawls was guided bya rational believe through out his life--A just society is realistically possible.From A Theory of Justice to Political Liberalism, John Rawls had been revising his theory of justice continuously, and this showed his firm belief and his indomitable spirit of pursuing justice.This thesis tries to probe into John Rawls' thought of "justice as fairness" by the way of the explanation and the standpoints of "moral constructivism" and "political constructivism", expecting to clear its theoretic background, to review its relations with Kant's ethics, to dredge the intrinsic clue of its changes from "Kantian moral constructivism" to "political constructivism", and finally to anatomize its success and failure of its changing standpoints, through which to outline the changing process of John Rawls' thought.This thesis thinks that John Rawls' thought of "justice as fairness" experienced a shift from "moral constructivism" to "political constructivism". During the period of A Theory of Justice and "Dewey Lectures", John Rawls' scenario can be described as "Kantian moral constructivism". His theory of "justice as fairness" just come down in one continuous line from Kant's constructivism ethics. The main point of Kant's ethics is that every single person should be regarded as free, independent and equal being, the ethical disciplines should not be posed on him from outside, and should not be an only means by which man gain his loaves and fishes. These disciplines are active choice made freely and independently by man in condition of equality. Rawls regard free and independent active choice as the action of self-construction of moral system. He thus called Kant's ethics constructivism. Justice disciplines are also constructivism, because we are firstly required to construct a kind of procedure of fairness, the perfect thing is: if the procedure is fair, it's result is sure to be fair. Justice disciplines are also Kantian, because Rawls tried hard to prove the reasonableness of the moral disciplines without the interference of the changeablehuman nature, just like Kant.Apart from the existence of "the fact of reasonable pluralism", Rawls was also criticized by some philosophers, so he gradually realized A Theory of Justice, in which the justice disciplines of liberalism is constructed, based on the core idea of "justice as fairness", is still only a Kantian moral philosophy of liberalism. In condition of modern democratic social reasonable pluralism, it is hard to get the universality of the basic theory as the base of public reason, thus, in Political Liberalism, he changed his idea of moral justice into political conception of justice, which is adopted universally by the social basic constructure, that is, from "Kantian moral constructivism" to "political constructivism". "Political constructivism" is a view about the structure and content of a political conception. It says that once, if ever, reflective equilibrium is attained, the principles of political justice (content) may be represented as the outcome of a certain procedure of construction (structure). In this procedure, as modeled by the original position, rational agents, as representatives of citizens and subject to reasonable conditions, select the public principles of justice to regulate the basic structure of society. This procedure, we conjecture, embodies all the relevant requirements of practical reason and shows how the principles of justice follow from the principles of practical reason in union with conceptions of society and person, themselves ideas of practical reason. By seeking for his freestanding view of political conception of justice, mading it exceed various kinds of comprehensive doctrines and gains their overlapping consensus from the doctrines and the social citizens, Rawls expected to settle the problem of justice and stability of free democratic society.The thesis finally discusses the success and loss of Rawls' standpoints changing process of "justi...